Saint Lane is relatively new to the music scene, having created his moniker back in 2018, but don’t think the lad hasn’t worked his ass off to get to where he is now.
Before releasing absolute crackers like Compliment My Shirt and the recently-dropped Hickeys, Saint Lane was sent packing from his former indie-folk band, Clashing Colours, when he was just 15 years old.
“I got kicked out of the band for holding them back,” he says. “They were just like, ‘We’re going to take this band to the next level, we’re gonna go to America’, and I was like, ‘Fuck yeah dudes, that’s us!’”, his bandmates dropped this absolute corker: “Yeah, we’ve got this dude [who’s] way better at bass than you.”
“It was literally like the plot of School of Rock.”
It appears that Saint Lane still got the last laugh, though.
“The drummer, the dude who kicked me out of the band, works at Event Cinemas now,” Saint Lane added.
Now look, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with working at the cinemas and most days I dream about watching movies and eating popcorn for free, but if you’re going to yeet someone out of your band, you best have the drive to back up your choices.
Band ejection aside, the New Zealand-born artist has had more than his fair share of adversities, spanning way back to when he moved to Australia for a rugby scholarship.
“I got a Rugby Union scholarship, so I moved from Auckland to the Gold Coast, and then I went to a…rugby school, and they fucking hated me at that school,” he says. “I often got beat up by year 12 kids every day. People who were 18 years old were beating up a 14-year-old.”
“So I was getting fucked up, and they were telling me to go back to New Zealand, ‘Go back to where you come from,’” he explains. “All my homies were me and the Aboriginal kids at the school and off the bat I was like, ‘Why are they telling these Aboriginal dudes to go back to where they [came from]? They’re from here?’ It made no sense at all.”
“So I was like, ‘Fuck this school’. I hated it so much…getting beat up every day by adults – by people who can vote.”
The good news out of all of this is that since then, he’s had what the street youths would call a ‘glow up’: “At this point in time I’ve got industry buzz. It’s really cool, I’m going to events and I’ll see famous musicians, and they’ll fuck with me – they’ll know me,” he says.
“But regular people don’t know who I am at all.”
Baby steps, my boy. Baby steps.
Am I empathetic of Saint Lane’s rocky road to success? Absolutely. Am I grateful that it might’ve helped pave the way for him to release tunes such as Sugary Sweet? 100%.
After powering through his blossoming discography, be sure to keep an eye out for his upcoming tour dates, releases and everything Saint Lane-related right HERE.
